Burning Persepolis

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 310, 22 March 1928, Page 14

Burning Persepolis

COURTESAN’S WHIM ALEXANDER’S FAVOURITE Salome, dancing for Herod, asked to be rewarded by a gift of the head of St. John the Baptist. Thais, a Greek courtesan who was the favcao. ite of Alexander the Great and accone panied him on his famous Asiatic cans, paign, dancing for Alexander, also asked for a reward, and when Ale* ander inquired what the reward wag, she made the cruel request that he burn the city of Persepolis, the glorv of the Persian world. This is the legend, and it is a fact that Persepolis was destroyed by a tremendous conflagration, the traces of which are visible even to-day, in the ruins. Another version has it that it was said to have been done in re. venge for the burning of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus by the Persians. But whether this was the motive, or whether it was done to please the perverse fancy of Thais, the city was set afire, and much glory perished in the flames. To-day scientists are busy at wosk reclaiming the lost world of splendour from the ruins. Persepolis was a very strong fortress. It had walls with a ditch, surmounted by other encircling walls which reached a height of fifty feet, and behind those a third wall. There was but one gate to which led a large double staircase, pronounced by the scientists to be one of the finest and most beautiful in the world. The staircase led to a main entrance hall, the outer and inner doors of which were guarded by pairs of colossi of old Assyrian pedigree, but far surpassing their ancestors in size. Just now the work of the excavators is being concentrated upon the remains of the huge audience hall of Darius, consisting of a central room, the roof of which was supported by thirty-six columns, and three open porticos on three sides. The two front corners of the building were formed by a pair of solid towers; constructed of sun-dried bricks. The sustaining wall of the audience hall is adorned with the representation of the gre|t tribute procession of the various nations at the New Year’s festival. To the east lies the ruins of a second audience hall, that of Xerxes, called, after the hundred columns that supported the celling, “The Hall of the Hundred Columns.” This structure was almost entirely destroyed by the fire. Beyond the palace buildings lies an agglomeration of buildings devoted to the private life of the king. The first trace revealed to the scientists was that of a considerable mound, which had in the past been regarded as merely a great heap of debris and rubbish. It was found, on investigation, to consist of splinters of stone and other refuse of building material, filling a square of thick walls of sundried bricks, lined with a covering -V enameled bricks. The design of the structure, and the consideration that a royal residence of antiquity surely Included some sort of a religious temple, makes it probable that this mound was once a sort of fire temple, resembling the temple towers of Babylonia. Adjoining it, on different levels, and very cleverly communicating by highly ornamented stairways, there are the winter palace of Darius and the summer palace of Xerxes. The latter has a fine balcony, overlooking the lowest part of the terrace to the south, where there are plain traces of a kind tl “hanging garden.” This stretched to the edge of the terrace on the south, and on the east extended to a third palace. These smaller palaces all contain a main room similar to that of the audience halls, and, besides, s number of small roc-ms, baths and lavatories. They apparently served the daily life of the king. On the steep slope of a rock behind the terrace are two royal tombs. A third one, left unfinished, lies to the south of the town. The three tombs belonged to the last of the Achaemenids. The tombs behind the palaces were separated from them, and from each other, by high walls. The walls also extend up to the mountain, and the enclosed area shows many traces of having been used for military guards. There have been found many fragments of broken pottery, bronze arrow-heads and other implements.